Mr Marcus McGowan MSc PgDip BA (Hons)

This Business Education Learning Blog is aimed primarily at Higher Business Management students/teachers and ICT students/teachers.

The aim of this blog is to provide you with interesting articles, news, trivia as well as resources or links to materials which will help in your course of study.

I am a Teacher of Business Education and I have written for Education Scotland and BBC Bitesize.

If you'd like to contact me please click on the link to: email me

Monday 27 February 2012

Scottish firms lead the way in conquering the US coach market

Planes were often the best way to travel in the USA. Coaches were frowned upon and the iconic Greyhound bus was often viewed as the method of transport for those running away!

Before that it was the railways that moved passengers coast to coast until 1910 when America became the land of the automobile thanks to Henry Ford.

However, the bus is making a comeback and Scottish firms are at the heart of it. Stagecoach bought out Coach USA some years back and now have a vast empire of famous yellow school buses, commuter buses, sightseeing buses and intercity buses. Stagecoach launched Megabus in the US in 2006, expanding rapidly to serve 72 major cities from hubs in Chicago and New York.

Another Scottish bus company, FirstGroup, bought over US firm Laidlaw in 2007 for $2.8bn (£1.78bn), giving it control of the 92-year-old Greyhound bus line. They launched BoltBus in 2008, initially going head-to-head with Megabus on the key New York to Washington route.

According to a new survey by DePaul University Inter-city bus travel grew by 7.1% in 2011, compared with 1.5% for air and 1.16% for rail.

PUBLIC BUS PASSENGER TRIPS IN THE US
New York - 3.2 bn
Chicago - 0.52 bn
Los Angeles - 0.48 bn
Washington DC - 0.44 bn
Boston - 0.37 bn

So how have they been so successful?
Stagecoach and FirstGroup offer tickets between major cities such as New York and Philadelphia, or Boston and Washington, for as little as $1 (63p), with typical one-way fares between $15 (£9.53) and $27 (£17.07).

They also offer free wi-fi and pick up passengers on the kerbside - rather than grotty old bus terminals has helped them become popular with more affluent passengers and lone female passengers.

The bus companies highlight the green benefits of buses, which have a lower carbon dioxide footprint than air or car travel.

US firms such as DC2NY are starting to offer similar services, but although travelers going between Washington DC and New York pay lower fares than rail or air travellers, the journey is at least an hour slower than the slowest train.

Further Reading here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16881957

Saturday 4 February 2012

Gas supplies shortage in Europe

Freezing weather sweeping across Europe has led to a shortage of vital Russian gas supplies to several countries, officials say.
An EU energy spokeswoman said eight countries had seen a reduction in gas due to increased demand in Russia.
She said the situation was not an emergency but was being monitored.
The cold snap is being blamed for scores of deaths in eastern Europe where temperatures have plunged to below -35C.

BT cuts costs

Telecoms group BT has reported a rise in profits, thanks to cost-cutting and an increase in broadband users.
Pre-tax profits for the three months to the end of December were £652m, 48% higher than a year earlier. Revenue fell 5% to £4.77bn.
Excluding one-off items, profits increased by 18%.
The company said it had expanded the availability of its fibre-optic broadband to seven million homes and signed up 95,000 customers to it.

US jobs boost

The US economy created 243,000 jobs in January, the highest total for nine months, official figures show.
The rise was much more than expected. Analysts had forecast an increase of about 150,000 jobs.
The unemployment rate dropped to 8.3%, which was the lowest rate in nearly three years, and down from a revised rate of 8.5% in December.
News of the jobs growth caused shares to rocket up, with the Dow Jones index up 156 points at 12,862, its highest level since May 2008.
The Nasdaq index, which specialises in technology companies, soared to its highest level since December 2000 by the close of trading on Friday.
In Europe, the FTSE 100 index hit its highest level since July 2011 rising 1.8% while Germany's Dax closed up 1.6%. The Cac 40 in France was 1.5% higher.

Global Warming... Fact or Fiction?

I do not know what to believe!

Al Gore made a good case for Global Warming in the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" which really made everyone think.

But now and again there are many experts and scientists who do not believe it at all.

James Delingpole is one such critic of the automatic acceptance of global warming.

and this one here:


What concerns me is that perhaps we are all the victims of stealth tax. What better way to bleed more money out of the poor consumer by making them feel guilty about the damage we are doing to the environment.

I do wish they would publish figures one way or the other and settle this once and for all. If global warming is real and caused by man then let's do something now, but at the same time not at the expense of people living just now. There has to be smarter ways to save the planet by using technology rather than just taxing everyone.

I would love to hear comments and data from people who actually know what they are talking about as we only read or see snippets and information that has been tarnished with propaganda!

Tell us the truth. Please.

Is independence the priority right now?

With the future of Scotland potentially at stake with the upcoming referendum over the break-up of the United Kingdom, who would get the oil in the North Sea?

95% of the oil the UK drills is on Scottish water, but it would be unlikely that Scotland would get it keep all of the revenues as UK money has been spent on machinery, equipment and research.

Plus when the oil was discovered it was as the UK and not just as Scotland.

But surely we need a concrete agreement of what would happen as this seems to be the SNP's main argument for a successful financial future.

There are also many entanglements to be sorted, not least Defence. Would/could we afford a Scottish army, navy and air force? Would we have military service for everyone as do many of the Scandinavian countries often cited by First Minister Alec Salmond as the financial role model for an independent Scotland?

We would keep the Queen as head of state (baffling that after 300 years of wanting independence it would not be a clean break...why not become a republic?) and keep the pound as the currency, though up until the Euro crisis John Swinney the SNP Finance Minister was keen on joining the Euro.

And would Scotland take our share of the UK debt? Scotland would not have a central bank which can bail out nations when in severe trouble by printing more money.

Then we have the thorny issue of Shetland and Orkney. My Uncle lives in Shetland and I know only too well that Shetlanders do not see themselves as Scottish but rather as Shetlanders and have more in common with the Faroes and Oslo rather than Edinburgh.

And as a marketing graduate I was humoured by the fact that the question favoured by Mr Salmond was: "Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country". Any first year business student who studies Market Research would tell you that it is indeed a leading question and quite frankly laughable.

I am patriotic to be Scottish and British, but I do think before any such referendum takes place, Scots deserve the details to be planned out before us because this is the most serious vote we will ever face in our lives.

I would also urge the Parliament at Holyrood to actually postpone independence talk and concentrate on the economy and the futures of our young people, many of whom will have no jobs and possibly few places on college, university and training courses. Added to that my own belifef that Scotland needs massive, MASSIVE investment in our transport system to bring us up to date with the rest of Europe there we have two or three issues I believe the politicians should be focusing on. It would be nice to have more motorways, better bus services, high speed trains linking our major cities, and airports that can handle passenger volume and indeed have excellent transport links to the cities (i.e. the GARL).

Politicians should remember their main job is to improve the everyday lives of the people. To raise living standards. I believe both the SNP and the Coalition in Westminster should take heed or they may not be in power when the next election comes along.

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